Parent sues Newport-Mesa Unified School District over cheating scandal

On the same day the county’s Board of Education dropped its lawsuit against the Newport-Mesa Unified School District over the Corona del Mar High School cheating scandal, news of another lawsuit against the district over the same issue emerged.

Claiming the district violated one student’s rights, coerced statements from the student and illegally threatened expulsion, a parent and student sued the district and its board. The plaintiffs were not identified in the suit.

The student was one of 11 implicated in the cheating incident made public in December, when the school announced that a private tutor allegedly helped the students hack into teachers’ computers to steal tests and change grades the previous school year.

In the complaint filed in Orange County Superior Court on Wednesday, the family’s lawyer, Mark Rosen, said the student’s grade was changed by private tutor Tim Lai without the student's knowledge or approval.

When peers implicated the student in the cheating scandal in December, the student was questioned for hours and not allowed to take medication for attention deficit disorder. For this reason, the complaint states, the student was denied disability rights by the district.

The family maintains that the student did not cheat, receive any tests in advance nor conspire with the other students in the cheating ring believed to have coordinated the hacking.

The student was falsely accused and then coerced into signing an expulsion agreement, resulting in a wrongful expulsion, the suit says.

The student was denied the right to a free public education in the weeks between being suspended and the board’s decision to expel the student from the school, and wasn’t given classwork or allowed to complete courses for the semester, the parent alleges.

The family asked a judge to terminate expulsion proceedings and reimburse the student for unspecified damages. The district does not comment on pending litigation.

Earlier Wednesday, the county Board of Education voted 4-0 to dismiss a lawsuit it had filed against the school district and five students implicated in the cheating scandal. Trustee Robert Hammond abstained.

The students sought to appeal their expulsion agreements with the board, saying they were coerced into signing the agreements. Unsure whether it had jurisdiction to even hear the appeals, the board filed the suit in the hope that a judge would make that determination.

Four of the five families have negotiated confidential settlements with the district. The remaining family was the one that filed the lawsuit Wednesday.

The board also voted to table the jurisdiction issue, meaning it will not hear the remaining family’s appeal. The vote to table the issue was related to a deadline that has passed for the board to consider the appeal.

While it’s not unheard of for students to appeal expulsions with county boards, trustees said this was the first time they had seen students attempt to appeal stipulated expulsions – a type of agreement that removes the student from the school, seals the student’s disciplinary record and waives the student’s right to appeal.

That appeal waiver was the part the county board was unsure of: While the agreements clearly stated that the families agreed not to appeal, lawyers for the families claimed the agreements were fraudulent and coerced.